The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Brazil
9 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful sacred places in Brazil are Christ the Redeemer, São Bento Monastery, Rio de Janeiro and Cathedral of Brasília. The list covers 9 sacred places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Brazil's sacred places were shaped above all by gold. When gold and diamonds were found in Minas Gerais at the end of the 17th century, the colony poured its new wealth into churches, and coastal cities like Salvador and Recife answered with interiors covered in gilded woodwork and Portuguese tiles. Out of this boom came a Brazilian Baroque led by the sculptor and architect Aleijadinho, and two centuries later a modernism that made concrete as expressive as carved stone.
The colonial high points are here. The São Francisco Church and Convent in Salvador is lined almost entirely in gold over carved wood, and the Capela Dourada in Recife takes its very name from its gilding. The São Bento Monastery in Rio de Janeiro hides a radiant gilded nave behind a sober facade. In Ouro Preto the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi is one of Aleijadinho's masterpieces, with a soapstone portal of his own design, and at Congonhas the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos lines its terrace with his twelve soapstone prophets.
The 20th century brought new forms. Christ the Redeemer, completed in 1931, stands on the summit of Corcovado above Rio, its outstretched arms clad in a mosaic of soapstone tiles. In Brasília, Oscar Niemeyer's cathedral gathers sixteen curved concrete columns into a crown filled with glass, an image the capital adopted as its signature.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Christ the Redeemer | Sculpture | |
| 2 | São Bento Monastery, Rio de Janeiro | Abbey | |
| 3 | Cathedral of Brasília | Cathedral | |
| 4 | São Francisco Church and Convent, Salvador | Church building | |
| 5 | Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Pampulha) | Church building | |
| 6 | Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos | Church building | ✓ |
| 7 | Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Ouro Preto) | Church building | |
| 8 | Capela Dourada | Church building | |
| 9 | Mother Church of Saint Anthony, Tiradentes | Church building |
01 Christ the Redeemer
Cristo Redentor
Brazil · 4.9 km from Rio de Janeiro22.952° S 43.210° W
Image by FlaviaPadula from Pixabay Underneath, it's reinforced concrete; the outer skin is soapstone, chosen specifically because it's easy to shape into smooth curves and holds up far better than bare concrete against the salt air and humidity at the summit of Corcovado. Silva Costa won the design competition in 1922, and the statue was dedicated on 12 October 1931.
Did you know? A small chapel in the base of the statue was consecrated in October 2006, on the 75th anniversary of its completion.
02 São Bento Monastery, Rio de Janeiro
Mosteiro de São Bento
Brazil · 3.7 km from Rio de Janeiro22.897° S 43.178° W
Halley Pacheco de Oliveira · CC BY-SA 3.0 The monastery's plain, almost fortress-like façade gives no hint of what waits inside: a richly gilded Baroque interior where wood carving covers nearly every surface in gold leaf, one of the most extensive uses of gilding in colonial Brazilian religious architecture.
Did you know? The German-born monk Ricardo do Pilar painted his masterpiece, the Senhor dos Martírios, for the sacristy around 1690.
03 Cathedral of Brasília
Catedral Metropolitana de Brasília
Brazil · 4.9 km from Brasília15.798° S 47.876° W
Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz) · CC BY-SA 4.0 The idea came together with the city itself. The cornerstone was laid in September 1958, and the bare structure — the sixteen columns, each weighing about 90 tonnes, calculated by the engineer Joaquim Cardozo — stood complete on 21 April 1960. Then the building waited for years as a bare skeleton; it was consecrated in 1968 and formally opened in 1970 as the Metropolitan Cathedral of Our Lady of Aparecida.
Did you know? When the cathedral was consecrated in October 1968 it still had no roof; its glass skin came only later.
04 São Francisco Church and Convent, Salvador
Igreja e Convento de São Francisco
Brazil · 3 km from Salvador12.975° S 38.509° W
Wellington Da Costa Gomez · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Franciscans came to Salvador in 1587, but their first convent and church were destroyed during the Dutch invasions of Bahia in the following century. Rebuilding began on a grand scale under Father Vicente das Chagas in 1686; the present church was laid out from 1708 and structurally finished by 1723, and the decoration of its interior went on for decades, most of it complete by 1755.
Did you know? The facade stone came from the Boa Viagem quarry on the Itapagipe peninsula, which was itself donated to the Franciscan friars.
05 Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Pampulha)
Igreja São Francisco de Assis
Brazil · 8.9 km from Belo Horizonte19.858° S 43.979° W
Bernardo Gouvêa · CC BY-SA 3.0 The chapel belonged to a leisure district that Juscelino Kubitschek, then mayor of Belo Horizonte and later president of Brazil, commissioned around Lake Pampulha: a casino (now the Pampulha Art Museum), a dance hall known as the Casa do Baile, a yacht club and this church, with gardens by Roberto Burle Marx and structural engineering by Joaquim Cardozo.
Did you know? It was the last building of the Pampulha ensemble to be inaugurated, and is regarded as the masterpiece of the whole group.
06 Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos
Santuário do Bom Jesus de Matosinhos
Brazil · 19.4 km from Conselheiro Lafaiete20.508° S 43.861° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by bea_marques from Pixabay The church is a single-nave colonial Baroque building with a richly gilded Rococo interior, but what draws most visitors is outside. A monumental terrace with curving double staircases, built between 1777 and 1790, was later populated with twelve Old Testament prophets carved in soapstone by Aleijadinho and his workshop between 1800 and 1805.
Did you know? The curving terrace has Portuguese precedents in the stairways of Bom Jesus do Monte at Braga and Nossa Senhora dos Remédios at Lamego.
07 Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Ouro Preto)
Igreja de São Francisco de Assis (Ouro Preto)
Brazil20.387° S 43.503° W
Sarah and Iain · CC BY 2.0 Look first at the facade. Instead of the usual square towers, two round bell towers flank the front, giving the building a soft, curving silhouette against the hills.
Did you know? The Third Order first petitioned Lisbon's Council of Conscience and Orders for permission in 1752, some thirteen years before work began.
08 Capela Dourada
Brazil · 3.5 km from Recife8.062° S 34.877° W
Wilfredor · CC0 The chapel belongs to the Third Order of Saint Francis and was built as the Chapel of the Novices (Capela dos Noviços) beside the Franciscan Convent of Santo Antônio. Its cornerstone was laid on 13 May 1696, it was opened on 15 September 1697, and work on its decoration went on until 1724. The Portuguese captain Antônio Fernandes de Matos directed the construction.
Did you know? By the time the work ended in 1724, the chapel's gilded decoration far outshone that of the convent church it was built beside.
09 Mother Church of Saint Anthony, Tiradentes
Igreja Matriz de Santo Antônio
Brazil · 7.8 km from São João del Rei21.110° S 44.178° W
Ricardo André Frantz · CC BY 3.0 The interior is a cave of carved and gilded wood. Between 1739 and 1750 the Portuguese carver João Ferreira Sampaio created the altarpieces, wall linings and throne of the chancel in the Joanine style, named after King João V of Portugal, with twisting Solomonic columns, garlands, shells and scrolls; the ceiling panels are painted in tempera and gold leaf.
Did you know? A silver oil lamp made in Rio de Janeiro and weighing about 55 kg hangs among the church's treasures of colonial silverwork.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful sacred places in Brazil?
- On our list, Christ the Redeemer ranks first, followed by São Bento Monastery, Rio de Janeiro and Cathedral of Brasília.
- How tall is Christ the Redeemer?
- The statue is about 30 metres tall, standing on a pedestal of about 8 metres, with arms spanning some 28 metres. It was completed in 1931 on the summit of Corcovado, about 700 metres above Rio de Janeiro.
- Who was Aleijadinho?
- Antônio Francisco Lisboa, known as Aleijadinho, was the leading sculptor and architect of colonial Brazil, active in Minas Gerais in the 18th century. He kept working despite a disabling illness, and his prophets at Congonhas are counted among the greatest works of Brazilian Baroque.
- How many sacred places are on this list in Brazil?
- The list covers 9 sacred places.